The Girl with the Peacock Harp

by Michael Eisele

  Vasili Illych put the offered flask to his lips and drank. Immediately a welcome warmth coursed through his limbs and all fatigue left him. ‘This is wonderful,’ he exclaimed, ‘I have never tasted anything like it! Is it distilled in this region?’

  ‘It used to be, long ago,’ Marzena said with a trace of sadness. ‘But come! It is but a short way to my village, and we are all anxious to meet you!’ She turned and began to retrace her steps up the curve of the ancient bridge, and Vasili Illych hastened to join her and to offer her his arm. The brandy was coursing through his veins like wild music and he suddenly could not wait for the night’s adventure to begin.

  ‘Who are “we”?’ he asked, somewhat archly.

  ‘Ah! I hope you will not mind, I have told all of the women,’ Marzena said with a sidewise glance under her lowered lids as they began to descend the other side, ‘of the handsome Captain of Police I have met. And would you believe it?’ she added, innocently. ‘The silly men of the village are every one of them abroad tonight, chasing bandits or some such thing, leaving all of us women without any protection! Oh, you will be most welcome, you may be sure!’

  The last light of the sun was disappearing as they walked, but a golden moon had risen and shed a gentle glow to light their way. Marzena hugged his arm close to her, leaning her head upon his shoulder, and Vasili Illych took sip after sip from the flask which he still held in his other hand, until it seemed that he walked in a dream through an endless moonlit landscape. The chorus of the frogs was round about them, growing steadily louder, Bre-ek Bre-ek, Bre-ek, Bre-ek, but he thought nothing of it until his boot struck against something soft and he looked down in surprise. There rank upon rank and row upon row were a disgusting great mass of the creatures, filling the roadway from side to side and he fancied he saw the moonlight reflected from hundreds of pairs of tiny bulging eyes, and their chorus rose to a frantic pitch, Bre-ek! Bre-ek! Bre-ek! Bre-ek! To his liquor-fogged brain it sounded as if they were all chorusing, ‘Back! Back! Go Back! He raised a booted foot to kick the slimy creatures out of the way, but Marzena shook her tousled blond head and disengaged herself from his arm.

  She strode forward a pace, and the front rank of the creatures retreated slightly. Then with her two arms she made a gesture as if parting a curtain, calling out something in her own language, words he could not catch. Obediently it seemed the mass parted, and hopping crawling and tumbling over one another sought the roadside, leaving the way ahead clear.

  ‘You are a sorceress of great power,’ Vasili Illych wondered if he were in truth dreaming all this.

  ‘Over frogs?’ Marzena laughed mockingly, ‘Come! It is but a short way now, over the next hill we shall see the lights of my village!’ She took his arm again, warmly, pressing herself so close to his side as to make his steps falter, or perhaps that might have been the brandy.

  Presently they reached the crest of the hill, and below them lay a broad valley where in the distance could be seen the lights of a sizable village, lying in the shelter of a tall cathedral. A light mist had risen which in the moonlight made all wavering and ghostlike. ‘Tell me, Vasili Illych Argamakov,’ asked Marzena suddenly, ‘can it be true that you are in some sense Mongolian? Something about your face tells me . . .’

  The Captain looked down indulgently. ‘Yes, the blood of conquerors does run in my veins,’ he said proudly, making the familiar boast. Marzena sighed and snuggled herself closer. ‘All the better,’ she breathed, and urged him onward.

  As they continued down the path the mist rose, until Vasili Illych fancied he could feel its cold touch lapping at his knees. Strangely the lights of the town seemed no nearer, and in fact were wavering and dancing like reflections on . . . water? Just as the word formed in his befuddled brain the sense of cold increased and he looked down in sudden consternation to see that he was in fact standing in water up to his thighs. The shock cleared the mists from his brain and he looked about him. Where was the village? Where was that witch Marzena? All around him was nothing but the dark surface of a lake where floated a carpet of waterlilies, bobbing and dancing in the sparkles of moonlight.

  In sudden terror he turned to retrace his steps, but the bottom sloped away steeply and he found his steps clogged and held. Frantic now he threw himself forward, only to fall with an echoing splash, and then his limbs somehow caught in the tangle of stems that supported the flowers and the cold water entered his clothing, soaking his greatcoat which added its weight to the downward pull. With his distorted face inches from the waterlilies he saw that each blossom contained a female face staring up at him. He seemed to hear Marzena’s voice laughing, telling him that all the women of the village were waiting to welcome him, to embrace him, and then the dark waters closed over his head and he knew no more. The white blossoms of the lilies bobbed and danced gently as the ripples slowly died and then the surface of the lake lay still and undisturbed once more under the indifferent moon.

  Then came movement near the shore, and out from under the floating lily pads crawled a large and rather corpulent frog. For some moments it sat, shivering slightly as it looked out over the waters, its bulbous protruding eyes blinking in the bright moonlight. The wide lipless mouth opened and it said ‘Bre-ek’ in a loud and mournful croak which was immediately answered by hundreds of others on all sides.

  MILOSH

  Old Lubaiya sat smoking her pipe and staring into her small cooking fire as the last of the sticks collapsed into ash. Out of the corner of her eye she could see movement, and heard a whispered conversation in high-pitched voices, enough to tell her that some of the little ones were trying to get up the nerve to ask her something. She grimaced resignedly. That was the trouble with being the oldest in the Kumpania, she told herself, being everyone’s Puri Daj. What was the use of living to such an age if you weren’t entitled to a little privacy? She saw two bare feet shuffling in the dust as the bravest was thrust forward and sighed without raising her head. Let the little monster wait, she thought.

  ‘Please, honoured Grandmother,’ came the high pitched voice, followed by a chorus of whispers as the others prompted him. She gave it a few more heartbeats and raised her head from her contemplation.

  ‘Well, what is it!’ she said more harshly than she intended, and felt a pang of remorse as the child’s eyes grew round and he stepped back a pace. Which one was this? She found she had no idea—every year there seemed to be so many. She took a long pull on her pipe which had gone out and spat the result into the ashes of the fire. ‘You have a question?’ she prompted in a quieter tone.

  The boy squared his shoulders and stepped forward. Lubaiya nodded approval: the People liked their children to be bold. ‘Honoured Grandmother, it’s about Grandfather Milosh.’

  Lubaiya closed her eyes briefly. Poor Milosh, like her, had lived to become everyone’s Puri Dad, even though his own children had left the tribe long ago to marry into other families. ‘Yes?’ she said encouragingly.

  ‘Well, that mark he has on his face right here?’ the boy indicated the spot with a grimy forefinger on his own left cheek. ‘Every time someone asks him where he got it from he says something different!’ There was a chorus of corroboration from the other children. ‘And tonight he said,’ the boy continued, his naturally dark features flushing a deeper red, ‘that when he was a little chavo like me he had asked one too many questions!’

  ‘You would like to hear the story?’ said Lubaiya unnecessarily. There was an excited murmur and the boy said, ‘Yes, very much!’

  ‘Well, I might tell it.’ she paused, frowning portentously, ‘Only, it grows cold and my fire has almost gone out.’ She waited until she saw their faces fall, then said slowly, ‘Of course, if I had some more firewood . . . it’s quite a long story . . .’

  The children disappeared as if by magic, scattering in all directions. Old Lubaiya waited, smiling to herself, hearing aggrieved shouts and complaints but nothing too serious. Children were expected to be able to fend for themselves, after all
. In a few moments, it seemed, they were back, each one staggering under a load of firewood filched from other sites. They made a common pile of their booty and the boy, their chosen spokesman, himself knelt and made up the fire expertly until it was blazing merrily, the smoke curling upward obscuring the stars overhead. Then they ranged themselves cross-legged in a semi circle around the fire in front of her stool, their eyes bright with delight at this unexpected treat.

  Lubaiya took her time filling her pipe and selecting a stick from the fire to light it with, then drew on it repeatedly until it was burning to her satisfaction. Her young audience waited patiently, for this was part of any storytelling, the pause to let the tension grow, and Old Lubaiya’s stories were famous when she was in the mood.

  ‘Yes, Milosh was once as small as you,’ she began, ‘but this story begins when he had grown to a young man, and the handsomest young man in all the tribes . . .

  ‘It was spring then, and the snows of winter were only a memory. The roads were open, and it seemed that all nature was on the move, like the birds, the wild geese calling from high overhead as they winged their way to their summer abode. Milosh strode along, however, blind to everything but his sense of injustice. What right had his sister to criticise how he spent his time? He was a man now, by the People’s reckoning, and a man made his own decisions, went where he pleased, did what he pleased . . . loved where he pleased. He took a deep breath of the cool spring air at the thought. Oh, what did it matter? No one would approve, and no one would understand, he had known that from the beginning.

  ‘As with his sister Djali this morning: “You are living in a dream, brother. She is gaje and will eat your heart, for the gaje have no hearts of their own. I know!” Djali was only two years his elder, he thought resentfully; of course she was the best drabami in the tribe, everyone said so, but being able to read someone’s fate in the palm of their hand surely wasn’t the same as looking into someone’s heart. And Alisoun . . . Milosh lost himself for a time in a vision of the charms of his beloved, her cheeks like rose tinted ivory, her hair of fine-spun gold that fell like a sheet of silk to her bare shoulders, her eyes . . . oh, surely, there could be no other such eyes in all the world, as blue as the bluest summer sky, blue as a mountain spring . . . yes, you can laugh, you chavos but love makes fools out of everyone in time, remember my words!

  ‘They had met on market day, on the village green, where he had come in company with four of his friends to watch the horse-racing that followed the close of trading. Nothing much on his mind, truth to tell, but which horse looked likeliest, and then there she was, in a group of other Gaje girls giggling and casting glances at the four dark faced boys from the wagon camp, and Milosh had swapped eyes with her, and that was that, as far as he was concerned, all settled, and the next thing would be that there would be a bride price and he would take her for his mort, but it seemed that things were not so straightforward among the gaje. For the one thing, Alisoun was quite certain that her father thought her too young to think of marrying, not to mention what he would consider a suitable bride price. And then (she said, blushing prettily) many people would be angered—she could not think why—that she had fallen so swiftly in love with a wagon boy. Milosh had to admit that the feelings of his own people towards the folk of the towns were much the same, and together they lamented how unfair it all was. Thus there were no end of secret meetings at such odd times as Alisoun could contrive.

  ‘At first they had met at the edge of the common, which Alisoun could approach by the road and he from the forest. Furtive, secret meetings, which added spice, it must be said, to what should by rights have been plain dealing between a man and a woman. Milosh had the speech of the region well enough, but he was hard put to it at first for Alisoun was not content that he had wanted her for his mort the moment he saw her, but he must put it in all different ways, and have a say about her hair, and her eyes, and so forth, while she sat with a blush on her white cheek and listened.

  ‘Then there would be a holding of hands, and little kisses and so forth, and then she would put him off, and say no, not yet, ’til poor Milosh was half mad with the wanting meeting there by of her, and perhaps that is the way such things are done among the gaje, like boiling a pot to no purpose. A strange folk, to be sure.

  ‘So there was Milosh, walking along to yet another meeting on the edge of the forest, and thinking to himself that here was he, a man grown, with a half share in a wagon and two good horses which should come to him if he took a wife, for his brother had intent to wed a woman of the Sinti over the mountains, and so to join with her family who had, it was said, many wagons of their own and horses without number.

  ‘By and by he came to the place where they met, and there were the little kisses, and the holding of hands yet again, and a say about how beautiful she was, and so forth, and then Milosh told of his plan, that she should come with him, and they should have the good wagon and the two fine horses, and travel the road and see the far places Alisoun was always talking about wanting to go to, and was he not lucky to be always travelling as he did.

  ‘Now Milosh was thinking there would be nothing more certain than that she would come with him, or if it was a matter of her family then he supposed he could part with one of the horses as bride price, or perhaps his mother would lend one of the necklaces of gold coins she wore. And if her family were not willing that Alisoun should go to the wagons, why then he would come by night and carry her off and they two should be on the road and away before any should know.

  ‘Alisoun when she heard of his plan said that nothing could be more thrilling, and what an adventure it would be, and so forth, but she could not go just as she was, but must have some proper clothes and her own things about her. She admitted that her family would not be happy that she should go and wed a boy from the wagons, but they would see sense in the end when she returned all decked out in gold like a queen. Milosh could tell that Alisoun had perhaps a peculiar notion of what life was like on the road, but he kept his thoughts to himself, thinking that when she saw the wagon with the fine canvas top only put on the year before, and the two strong horses to pull it, she would count herself lucky to have married such a fine fellow as himself, and perhaps his sister Djali could teach Alisoun the reading of palms, and all the other things she would have to know to be a woman of the People.

  ‘So they fixed it that Milosh should come that evening, when all should be quiet, and Alisoun told him how to find her house in the great warren of the town, and so it was decided.

  ‘Then Milosh went off into the forest to wait ’til it should be night, and he passed the time in snaring two fine fat rabbits, and one he dressed and cooked over a small fire he made there, but the other he put safe into his game bag, thinking they should have it for their supper and he would teach Alisoun the proper way to prepare it, for he doubted that she had had much to do with such things, her hands being so white and soft and fine.

  ‘Now I will say no more ’til you all are done with your laughing. . . .

  ‘At last as the sun was setting Milosh set off for the town, and as he neared it there was the first problem, for there was the big gate in the wall around the town, and a man checking all who passed through it, so Milosh left the road and circled round, and there was a herd of horses being let through their own gate into the stalls where they would spend the night. Milosh went among them, and let himself be smelt all over, and he smelled of woodsmoke and dogs and horses, being a boy from the wagons as he was, and the horses trusted him and liked him, and he went among them for it was dark, and so entered into the town by that gate.

  ‘Then came the second problem, for the town of the gaje was like a rabbit warren, with houses all piled one upon the other and narrow twisting streets that might lead anywhere, but Milosh kept his head, and remembered the directions Alisoun had given, that the house of her family was set high on a hill above all the others, so that he had only to take any street that should go upward and in time he was bound t
o come to it. There was the town guard of course, patrolling the streets two by two with stout cudgels at the ready, but what was that to a boy from the wagons who could creep up on a rabbit and it all unknowing or take a fine trout from a stream with only his bare hands? So he went along and presently he came to a house finer than all the others, set up on a high hill as Alisoun had said.

  ‘Now the door of the house being shut as it was night, Milosh went round to the back and sure enough there was Alisoun’s window high up as she had said, with a candle in the window as they had agreed, and Milosh could see there was a kind of ladder on the wall that led to it, with vines and flowers that were growing there, and nothing would be easier than that he would climb up the vines and flowers and let himself in at her window. And so it went, and up he went, with the game bag slung over his shoulder, and here at the end was the third problem, for instead of Alisoun waiting at the top he found two men that were servants of the house, and they laid hands on Milosh and made him prisoner, and when he was bound fast into the room came the master of the house that was Alisoun’s father, and behind him peering fearfully around his shoulder came Alisoun herself in her nightgown.

  ‘Then one of the servants said they had caught the thieving gypsy as he was about to rob them, and reached into the game bag of Milosh and took from it a little silver cup. Then Milosh knew that one of the servants had put it there and he opened his mouth to say that he had come for no other reason than to take Alisoun away with him and had stolen no cup, but the Master of the house came close to him and struck him in the face and told him to keep still, and in a whisper added that it was better to be taken for a thief, unless he wished to be gelded as well.